First, I searched the blog to check whether I had already quoted this phrase. I found A Dark Rushing, in which the rain is louder than a raucous laugh, and Ythrians And The Weather, in which the sea laughs.
However, the phrase in question is here:
"She did not answer at once. Startled not to receive the immediate yea he had expected, Arinnian lifted his eyes to her silence. He dared not interrupt her thought. Waves boomed, rain laughed." (XIX, p. 653)
Arinnian has asked whether he is able to be what Hrill, his fiancee, deserves so, of course, he expects or at least hopes for a positive answer. Waves and rain underline Eyath's silence. Waves merely boom but rain laughs. At Arinnian? At all human aspirations? At me for asking such questions?
(According to James Blish's Cities In Flight, when St Augustine was asked what God was doing before the Creation, he replied that He was creating a Hell for people blasphemous enough to ask such questions - and that thought has taken us a long way from rain laughing.)
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
If anything, I thought that bit about the "rain laughed," was best understood as being optimistic or hopeful.
As for the question about what God was doing before the Creation, I would have pointed that since God is eternally happy and infinitely self-sufficient, there was no NEED for Him to "do" anything.
Sean
Sean,
Rain laughing could be optimistic.
That is the right answer to the Augustinian question - assuming theistic premises, of course.
Paul.
Paul:
The rain is laughing on Anderson's behalf, wickedly but not really evilly, not so much at you as: "Ohhhh, that'll keep Paul Shackley speculating...."
Indeed.
Kaor, Paul and DAVID!
Paul: And I believe those theistic premises to be true.
David: That was amusing, the suggestion about the shade of Poul Anderson, in the afterlife, being good humoredly amused by Paul's speculations!
Sean
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